Monthly Archives: March 2014

GCC, Russia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

After Crimea: Will a Lonely Star Opt to Live with Mexico? How about the GCC?………

      

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“This wouldn’t be the first time Crimea has changed hands, though. The peninsula became part of Ukraine only in 1954, and before that it had a bewildering number of owners, including the ancient Greeks, the Scythian Empire, Rome, the Goths, the Huns, the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, Venice, Genoa, Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and, briefly, Nazi Germany. Still, for the last 60 years it has been part of Ukraine, and having it ripped away would be quite shocking…………. Like Crimea, Texas has been part of many other nations and was once its own sovereign republic — the six flags at the famous Texas-based amusement park represent those various countries: Spain, France, Mexico, the U.S., the Confederate States of America, and of course the Republic of Texas. And although 97 percent of Texans wouldn’t vote to secede from the U.S. today, the Lone Star State has a sizable separatist movement. Texas and Crimea are also both situated at the bottom middle of their respective nations, and in similar proportion.………..”

The Mexicans are unlikely to do a Putin and storm across the Río Bravo del Norte to reclaim Texas. At least not in the same way. Although the governor of Texas has been threatening secession, again, and the history of Texas tells us the Lonely Star state would be seeking another domestic partner to shack up with again. And who is there in a convenient location to open their arms (not weapons) and welcome it back? The Mexican oligarchs and ruling classes may not want that. They probably know they’ll screw it up just as they have their other states from Chiapas to Baja California: soon Austin may look like Tijuana.

Speaking of a partner to shack up with: the Saudi king is perennially seeking new additions to the Gulf GCC. If he ever got wind of the restlessness of Texas, the potential of a Lonely Star, he might come a-courting. Seeking to get it to join the Gulf GCC (not the Gulf of Mexico, that other Gulf).

Cheers
mhg

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Iran, Russia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Nuclear Campaign 2016: Hillary Clinton Covering her Right Flank, Smilin’ Joe Biden………

      

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“Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed doubt about the possibility of reaching a deal to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities, one of the only instances in which she has not given her full-throated support to President Obama since leaving her post early last year. “The odds of reaching that comprehensive agreement are not good,” Clinton said in an address at the American Jewish Congress gala, according to the Washington Post. “I am also personally skeptical…………….”

It might be just a precaution, in case the nuclear talks somehow fail. Then a loud: “I told you so!” at the Iowa debates. Odd how the U.S. has pushed harder for solutions to issues with Iran, Israel, and Palestine now that Clinton is out of the State Department. Could be partly the political changes inside Iran. It would have been impossible for Obama to take a call from Ahmadinejad as he sped out of New York City (‘Oh, by the way Mr. Obama, I did not really mean all that stuff about the Holocaust‘). I don’t hold much hope for the Israel-Palestine approach at this time, but the Iran issue seems to be moving smoothly. Seems to be making a lot of progress. It must take more than ‘celebrity star power’ to deal with world problems.
 
Fresh from calling Vladimir Putin a new ‘Hitler’, or was it ‘like Hitler’? (Silly cliches always make it to the evening news). The Russians must be getting wary of Hillary (well, Gillary in Russian, not even Khillary). She is only covering her ‘right flank’ for 2016. Republicans will keep squawking “Benghazi, Benghazi!”, and Hillary will keep calling for tighter screws on Iranian thumbs as she tries to cover her right flank with the Democrat war bloc for the primaries and with others for the general elections. (The Democrats are missing a left flank for now: Bernie Sanders is not even in the Party). Like two kids, toddlers playing around each other rather than with each other. Interesting debate that will be, it already is, no?
Then there is “Smilin’ Joe” Biden, her main fear and worry right now. So far possibly the most qualified man (or woman) in the potential presidential field. So far. That includes both parties: Democrat, Republican, plus Communists and even AJC.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab League, France, History, Iran, U.S. Politics

Leaders in Retirement from France to America to Libya to Outer Space: So Where is Ahmadinejad?………

      

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So whatever happened to Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Where is the favorite bête noire of the Western world for the past decade? The favorite son of New York City every late September? He has gone awfully and uncharacteristically quiet. Almost like any former U.S. president, with the exception of Clinton. We mostly know where former leaders are in the West (not necessarily where they should be) and what they are doing (or trying to do):


  • Write s book or two (memoirs to make a lot of money and explain their lousy policies.



  • Give speeches and lectures (mainly to make a lot of money).



  • Start some institute (to stay out of trouble, like Clinton).



  • Appear a lot on TV (like Clinton).



  • Appear a lot on media wherever someone interviews you (like Clinton.



  • Have a lot of fun, and I mean fun (like Clinton).



  • Start work on a (Walter Mitty?) presidential library. All US presidents do that since it is funded by the public and through donations.



  • In France former presidents don’t have time to waste on libraries. They must quickly start collecting lawyers for the upcoming inevitable investigations and possible trials for financial corruption. From accepting cash bribes to accepting diamonds from West African dictators.This has always been the case after de Gaulle.


  • Russia hasn’t had a former president for almost two decades. So we don’t really know what happens to them. Wait, I know: they become prime minister and are recycled again through the merry-go-round.



  • Start collecting money quickly by working as adviser for foreign potentates and unsavory dictators as well as working as a lobbyist for corporations. Tony Blair of Britain is the only one that fits this bill so far: Churchill and Wilson and Thatcher would not think of it, the fools.



  • In Lebanon, nobody gives a f-ck what a former president says or does. Come to think of it, in Lebanon nobody gives a f-ck what a current president says or does.



  • In Syria and Egypt and Algeria and Libya and other Arab countries there is no such thing as a former president. If they don’t kill him quickly, they put him on trial for real or (mostly) trumped up charges. They end up hanging him or keeping him in prison for life. Probably serves them right in most cases.



  • Retire to the French or Italian Riviera (usually former kings are entitled to do that).



  • Host a talk show?



  • Die quickly.


Mr. Ahmadinejad has done none of the above, yet. He may start teaching at the university again. I did read somewhere that he is pushing a new college (no, not for Holocaust Studies and Verification). Then there is the Iranian Space Program and the promise to send a human into space within the next two years. He has expressed a desire to think about it.
Too bad no Arab country has a manned space program. I wish they all did, the whole Arab League from Syria down to Riyadh and through Somalia: imagine the possibilities. One can dream………..
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood

Baghdad on the Nile? Egyptian Kangaroo Courts add Drug Charges to Morsi Trials……

      

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“All Arab political courts are like bad jokes, except to their victims.” Me?


“A son of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi will face trial for alleged possession and use of hashish, judicial sources said on Monday, but no date has yet been fixed. Abdullah Morsi, 19, was arrested on March 1 along with a friend for allegedly possessing two joints while they were in a car parked by the roadside in Qalyubia province north of Cairo. The two were freed the next day pending investigation after agreeing to give urine samples which the prosecution says tested positive. Morsi’s other son Osama has denied the charges against Abdullah, saying the authorities were “fabricating the case” and that his brother’s arrest was an attempt to “defame the family”……………..”

The judicial absurdity does not stop in Cairo, it gets even more absurd by the day. Now they are hounding the family of Morsi, in the true style of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist justice.

 
I wrote last month that: They are doing it again in Cairo. My special
source, snuck secretly into Cairo, reports that Egyptian courts have
been ordered to add some new charges to the litany of charges against
deposed president Morsi. The elected Mr. Morsi was deposed by a military coup d’etat led by Generalisimo Abdelfattah Al Sisi……….. just in case, just to make the case against
Morsi watertight, she reports they have decided to add new charges to
the old ones. The new charges could include contributing to global
warming, African threats of diverting Nile waters, the loss of East
Jerusalem to the Jews (King Hussein is dead), the jump in Syrian war
victims from 75 thousand dead to over 100 thousand dead during his year
in office, topless German tourists switching their sun
bathing-activities from Egypt to Cyprus, as well as any epidemic and natural
disaster that may befall Egypt and neighboring countries. She also reports that they toyed with a new charge against the doomed Morsi……………


Arab Politics, Egypt, GCC, Jordan, Morocco

GCC Expansion or Contraction? From the Deserts of Jordan through Tahrir Square to Lido de Paris………

      

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They are raising the issue of GCC confederation and expansion again. Bahrain shaikhs and elites, their country already almost annexed by Saudi occupation forces and having nothing to lose, are also pushing for it publicly and on social media. Wahhabi liberals on the Persian Gulf, who look to the absolute Saudi princes for Liberté et Egalité et Fraternité, are as excited about it as they probably can get excited about anything (save perhaps for one other thing). But as I have been saying since 2011 the Saudi idea ploy of confederation has always been DOA.
 
There is even a revival of the idea of expansion, even as some claim the original GCC may be unraveling, well maybe at least weakening. At least the long-existing differences cannot be swept under the rug anymore. Just as a couple of GCC countries seem ready to bolt out of the stifling Saudi embrace. Yet there is new absurd talk of Egypt being asked to join: the media told us Al Sisi and a gaggle of Al Nahayans had some sort of joint Jane Fonda military exercises last week.
 
We know that the Saudi princes have been seeking pliable partners to expand the Gulf GCC. Except that there are no more pliable partners left. They have tried with Jordan in 2011, but then King Abdul in Amman called one of his funny but humorless elections, and the princes don’t cotton up to elections, even funny humorless elections in Jordan. Some GCC potentates quickly and untruthfully claimed they were postponing Jordanian accession until after Ramadan (of 2011). They also invited faraway Morocco to apply for membership, but that was before the King of Morocco called elections which were won by what passes for the Moroccan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Alas, Morocco has no Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi who can set things right after undesirable election results.

Now rumors have it that the princes have been toying with reliably counter-revolutionary Egypt as a possible member, initially that was on the table in 2012 as a ploy to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from winning the last election. Some wags have even claimed that since Crimea voted for secession the princes had thought that maybe they can get that region to join the GCC, but Vladimir Putin quickly beat them to it with this annexation thing.
 
Back to the drawing board. Morocco and Jordan and Egypt may still look good as targets of Saudi wooing. But speaking of wooing: the Saudi princes are notorious polygamists, much more so than any Westerner, even a French president like Francois Hollande. Polygamy can be added as their middle name: Polygamous Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sounds correct while “Polygamous French Republic” sounds so wrong even if true, especially in French.
I suspect, nay I know, that all of these one-night-stand candidates have less chance of joining the GCC than Turkey has of joining the European Union. Less chance now than the State of Mississippi has of joining the Organization of Islamic Countries. All of them together have about as much chance of becoming GCC members as I have of becoming the next Mufti of Saudi Arabia (or a mufti of anywhere else for that matter).

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Saudi Arabia

Turki of Arabia: A ‘Prince About Town’ Comfortable in his Family Skin………

      

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“Having been head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID) for 24 years – stepping down in 2001 just 10 days before the 9/11 attacks – Turki is probably the most experienced spy on the planet. Since then he has been Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK and Ireland and then to the United States. Now he runs a think-tank in Riyadh, the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies, and travels the world giving lectures and meeting friends. It sounds like a nice life, I say. “For me it’s heaven on earth,” he replies. High quality global journalism requires investment. A scion of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, the House of Saud, Turki is the youngest son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. Turki’s brother, Saud al-Faisal, is foreign minister, and cousins and brothers dominate the upper echelons of the government………………”

It says: “cousins and brothers dominate the upper echelons of the government”. I got news for this writer: they own the upper echelons of the government. They also own the middle echelons and the lower echelons. They own every echelon. They own the whole fucking government. They own the whole blighted country and everything on it. Why else did you think the whole country is named after the family?
 
P.S.: I have always thought Turki was a witty prince, witty for a Saudi prince. The rest are quite ‘witless’. I mean even Al-Waleed Bin Talal who keeps insisting his wealth is bigger than we think is not so witty. Actually Al Waleed is quite witless, he shows such a lack of a sense of humor that he makes some of the mullahs look like stand-up comedians in comparison.

Cheers
mhg

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Al-Azhar, Arab Politics, Egypt, Malaysia, Qatar, U.S. Politics

On Al Sisi, Malaysian Airlines, Kim Jong Un, Al-Azhar and Chicago Voters………

      

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Some in Qatari media, and offshore media owned and those financed by Qatari potentates, keep trying to make mischief. They have been claiming that Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi has hinted in Abu Dhabi that he may be able to solve the mystery of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Some Egyptian politicians, terrified that Al Sisi may win the coming presidential elections by the typically Arab 99% of the vote instead of the expected and more respectable 80%, are pushing back. Others have noted that 99% still sounds pretty democratic, if compared to the 100% won last week by Kim Jong Un of North Korea. 

Some Al-Azhar cleric added a fatwa that: “Yes, it is possible to win 100% in a democracy. It is possible to win 105% in a democracy under certain circumstances. For example there are cases where the dead have been allowed to vote, and I am not talking about Chicago either………..“.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Syria

Syrian Elections: Free World and Free Saudi Arabia and Free Qatar and a Future President Assad…….

      

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Ahmad Al Jarba, the Saudi-appointed head of the Syrian National Coalition, has insisted that the “free world” provide the Syrian opposition with the means to fight Bashar al Assad. But the “free world” is already supporting his coalition. Saudi Arabia and Qatar and a few other democratic members of the “free world” have been pouring money, weapons, and Salafi Jihadis into Syria for three years. You can’t get any freer than the princes and potentates. They are “free” to do whatever they want in their countries. They are free to loot whatever they want. They are free to silence, shut up, anyone they want, and they do.
How can Mr. Al Jarba claim that the “free world” does not support him and his allied groups and militias?
Meanwhile Mr. Al Assad, fresh from a new military victory at Yabroud, is reportedly getting ready to run for a third term as president this year. This no doubt will complicate things. And I am guessing he can win at least as many votes as Al Jarba can, actually much more. As I have written before, Syrians are divided. Anyway, tribal type candidates are not likely to win many votes in the major cities and in Western Syria in general.
Personally, I believe if an Assad must run, it should not be Bashar. Too much bloodshed during his reign, although some of it was spilled by the opposition as well. Little Hafez Al Assad (petit-fils) is probably too young to run. Which leaves Asma Akhras Al Assad as the only plausible candidate. I know she has no goatee (saksooka) and hence will not be easily acceptable to the Saudis. Why else do you think they repress their women so much?……….

Cheers
mhg

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GCC, Russia, US Foreign Policy

A Russian Gas Station? Senator Unwittingly Disses Sputnik and Many OPEC Countries………

      

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““Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country,” McCain told Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s kleptocracy, it’s corruption, it’s a nation that’s really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy.”………………..”

I must admit it is a great sound bite. He is right about the corruption and kleptocracy and the funny political game that keeps Putin and his sidekick Medvedev in power forever. But, ah, Senator McCain, suppose next time you fly into Riyadh or Doha or a couple of other cities in our region and you are asked about this funny statement? I mean especially about that oil and gas station and the corruption and kleptocracy?

“Masquerading as a country”? Which reminds me of a long history, of a few dead gentlemen and ladies like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Pushkin and Turgenyev and Borodin and Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin (look him up) and Valentina Tereshkova (look her up), and some others. And a few places that probably suffered more than any other places in the last century: Stalingrad, Leningrad, Crimea (when it was Russian), Smolensk, etc, etc.……..
And then there were the soldiers who liberated Auschwitz: they were not from the EU (many of those were helping round up the victims) or from France or Saudi Arabia.
Then there was the Okhrana and the Gulag. And there was Stalin, but he was not Russian, he was a Georgian. No, not Dixie or CSA, the other Georgia, the one Senator McCain said “We are all Georgians” about.

Cheers
mhg

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Human Right, Iraq, Islam, Women

Human Trafficking: Iraqi Parliament about to Legalize Islamist Pedophilia………

      

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“Iraq’s Council of Ministers should withdraw a new draft Personal Status Law and ensure that Iraq’s legal framework protects women and girls in line with its international obligations. The pending legislation would restrict women’s rights in matters of inheritance and parental and other rights after divorce, make it easier for men to take multiple wives, and allow girls to be married from age nine. The draft law, called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of the Jaafari school of Shia religious jurisprudence, founded by Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia imam. Approved by the Council of Ministers on February 25, 2014, it must now be approved by the parliament to become law……………….”


This will be a crime against humanity because it will legalize and enable many multiple crimes of pedophilia in Iraq. Child marriage is a barbaric practice and a crime against humanity and it robs the victims of their childhood. It is an act of human trafficking, since the ‘bride’ is too young and has no power of decision and is effectively sold by her male guardian. Some Muslim states are hesitant, nay are afraid to enact laws against child brides, because of something that allegedly happened about 15 centuries ago. But that was then, this is now.

Cheers
mhg

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